As I drag myself from cup of coffee to cup of coffee, led by the soothing sounds of The Eagles, still recovering from last night (happy new year everyone!), it hit me that there is this thing I normally do, this website. Anyway, we've got some good Haiku news on this first day of 2010.

Many people seem to have the misconception that for a UI to look modern it must have all kinds of rotating thingies and transparencies and glitz and all that. But that just isn't true. You CAN have a modern-looking, clear, functional and good-looking UI, without going overboard with effects, if you just carefully think about it.

For example, font smoothing is a definite must, it helps to make all text more readable. Light, not overdone gradients can make the elements easier to spot and appear less flat while still maintaining a professional look. A very light shadow can make the windows clearer and can be f.ex. used to indicate better which window is on the top. And so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, the less radical, rather careful ideas about how to improve the UI tend to drown in the flood of people (more like extremists) either shouting for every kind of possible glitz or the ferociously nostalgic people who don't want any single modernization of the UI at all. I still try to remain hopeful that the devs will find some good middle-ground and that I too can some day enjoy of a good-looking Haiku OS on my desktop